Web-host downtime makes me angry

As a few of you know, my Purdue website went down the other day. If you wanted to view the example files from my other blog post, that was just too bad.

I can relate to this angry rhino!

This post will mostly just be a rant about how irritating downtime is and a little discussion about getting a new host.

I understand that maintenance needs to be done on servers; That’s fine and dandy, but this weekend it was just ridiculous. There was supposed to be a few hours of maintenance from 9 in the morning to noon on Sunday, which is perfectly reasonable. Until the problems started.

At noon, the servers were still down. Oh well, that’s still ok. Purdue kept posting updates about when the servers would come online, but kept pushing it back farther and farther. Eventually, they said it would definitely be fixed by 7 that night. Well, 7 rolled around and *raspberry* it’s still down. At that point the status was updated to (and still is as of 5:40 PM 8/4/09):

Estimated end time: Unknown

Oh boy…

Actually, 4 of the servers are STILL down. (They might be back up by the time you go to that link.) Luckily for me, they fixed the server that my files are hosted on so I guess I shouldn’t worry about it.

If this was a server that only had just my website files on it, I’d be fine with this downtime, but these servers are where I store all my homework files and where all the computer labs connect to. If this had happened on a bad day during the school year, I’d be totally S.O.L.

I bet he can't serve his example files either.

Because of this, I’ve thought about getting a paid web-host. It’d be cool to have better up-time. Having total control would also be nice since WordPress.com doesn’t allow you to run plugins (since they’re doing hosting for you) and my Purdue website doesn’t give me full control over the databases and other configurations (which is reasonable).

If I get a new host I’ll have to think of a new domain name. samkerr.com is already taken, so that’s out. What do you think about rantsramblesandrhinos.com? I think it’s too long. Hmm… Well, I’m sure I’ll think of something.

While looking for a web host, I found a pretty entertaining website called No Uptime Hosting. They offer some satirical hosting plans (Now with free identity theft!), but also offer reviews of some hosts to avoid. I’ll have to keep those in mind (or out-of-mind rather).

Or what about hosting the server myself? I have a couple extra computers laying around, but I’m not sure if it’d be worth all the trouble of maintaining a server.

Do you have any suggestions about choosing a web host? How do you like yours?

2 responses

WebFaction are a good host but with somewhat of a premium pricing. You get a premium service though as far as `shared hosting` goes. You get ssh shell access and they let you run anything you like as long as you don’t exceed your memory quota. The support guys are all very friendly, knowledgeable and eager to help. The shared plans are cheaper than a VPS with comparable memory when you consider you don’t pay ram for static file serving (nginx) or the operating system.